
Welcome to Woodstock, the current sign at the site of the legendary 1969 festival declares, adding: 'this is a smoke free environment'.
15 August marks 40 years since up to half a million people camped for three days at Bethel, a village near New York City, to revel in marijuana, nudity, peace, mud and music.
But while the famous hill forming a natural amphitheatre is unchanged, the welcome sign makes clear that the site - like many former hippies - has seriously changed.
'No public intoxication, no tents, canopies or beach umbrellas, no camping,' reads the sign. 'No loud music.'
Actually, there will be music on Saturday, but only with a handful
of rather diminished survivors from the 1969 line-up playing to a modest-sized, carefully controlled crowd.
Other anniversary events include an Ang Lee feature film called 'Taking Woodstock,' due out this month, and a flurry of books and CDs.
What no one is attempting to repeat is the original event, touted as the greatest rock concert in history and an extraordinary outpouring of hope and protest at the height of America's traumatic 1960s experience.
The idea has come up often, but the spirit of '69 is elusive.
The original organisers spent years bickering after the concert. They also failed to establish a working relationship with the current owners of the Bethel site and museum.
And while Michael Lang, one of the leaders, floated several possibilities to mark this anniversary, including a concert in New York City, none came off.
His last big bash - a concert on the 30th anniversary in 1999 - is best remembered for ending in a riot.
This leaves nostalgic hippies little beyond the hallowed, if strangely antiseptic, surroundings of the Bethel site.
From the huge car park, visitors cross mown grass and pass another sign - this one setting size limits on picnics - before paying $13 to enter the museum.
Exhibits at the complex, which resembles a swish conference centre, tell the story of the concert and the tumult of the period, from the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior to the Vietnam War and Moon landing.
While rock greats like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin sing their hearts out, visitors peruse interactive video screens. They crash out on bean bags and can even board the kind of psychedelic bus used to ferry thousands of flower children into Bethel four decades ago.
There's a distinct theme park feel, but museum director Wade Lawrence, 54, is not apologising.
'Modern museum goers expect a certain level of amenities, a comfort level,' he said, explaining that the emphasis on interactive features is aimed at today's gadget-obsessed youth. 'If we didn't have the interactive side, we'd lose them.'
While real hippies are missing from the Woodstock museum, anyone with a credit card can at least get the look.
The tour leads to a gift shop where T-shirts emblazoned with the original dove-and-guitar logo sell for $24.95. Posters advertising the concert sell for $129.95 and psychedelic tea mugs for $12.95.
There's even a 'peace fingers sculpture,' a life-sized model of a hand making a V sign, at $40 plus tax.
Woodstock's hippies turned on, tuned in, dropped out, tried changing the world - then got haircuts and job
s.
To those who were there on 15-18 August 1969, the rock festival seemed at first to promise a beautiful new era.
But the big high led to a big hangover and today, 40 years on, it's unclear whether Woodstock changed anything at all.
